What's Worse - 404 errors or a huge .htaccess file
-
We have changed our site architecture pretty significantly and now have many fewer pages (albeit with more robust content and focused linking).
My question is, what should I do about all the 404 errors (keep in mind, I am only finding these in Bing Webmaster tools, not Moz or GWT)?
Is it worse to have all those 404 errors (hundreds), or to have a massive htaccess file for pages that are only getting hits by the Bing crawlbot.
Any insight would be great.
Thanks
-
It's not ideal to have such a massive .htaccess file that it slows down your page load time significantly. But if you have a lot of inbound links to pass that matter, you'll likely want to keep your SEO value intact and use 301 redirects to handle this properly.
My $0.02: Test!
Do a page load test with the .htaccess file off / removed, and then do another one where it is on and live. If there's no significant time difference, you should be okay.
We have sites with hundreds or even thousands of lines in the .htaccess file and they run pretty quickly.
That said, here's why 404 pages aren't ideal to serve:
According to Rand Fishkin's Moz blog writeup, Are 404 Pages Always Bad for SEO?
http://moz.com/blog/are-404-pages-always-bad-for-seo"When faced with 404s, my thinking is that unless the page:
A) Receives important links to it from external sources (Google Webmaster Tools is great for this)
B) Is receiving a substantive quantity of visitor traffic
and/or C) Has an obvious URL that visitors/links intended to reachIt's OK to let it 404."
According to Moz's Redirection SEO Best Practice:
http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
... you want to use a 301 redirect to indicate that the content has moved permanently.Finally, here's a post that describes how to create a more SEO friendly migration, here's a great info graphic:
http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographicHope this helps!
Thanks,
-- Jeff -
I think the 404 errors would be more of a concern. A large .htaccess shouldn't be a problem especially if you are only talking about a few hundred redirects.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will a Robots.txt 'disallow' of a directory, keep Google from seeing 301 redirects for pages/files within the directory?
Hi- I have a client that had thousands of dynamic php pages indexed by Google that shouldn't have been. He has since blocked these php pages via robots.txt disallow. Unfortunately, many of those php pages were linked to by high quality sites mulitiple times (instead of the static urls) before he put up the php 'disallow'. If we create 301 redirects for some of these php URLs that area still showing high value backlinks and send them to the correct static URLs, will Google even see these 301 redirects and pass link value to the proper static URLs? Or will the robots.txt keep Google away and we lose all these high quality backlinks? I guess the same question applies if we use the canonical tag instead of the 301. Will the robots.txt keep Google from seeing the canonical tags on the php pages? Thanks very much, V
Technical SEO | | Voodak0 -
On March 10 a client's newsroom disappeared out of the SERPS. Any idea why?
For years the newsroom, which is on the subdomain news.davidlerner.com - has ranked #2 for their brand name search. On march 10 it fell out of the SERPs - it is completely gone. What happened? How can I fix this?
Technical SEO | | MeritusMedia0 -
Htaccess - multiple matches by error
Hi all, I stumbled upon an issue on my site. We have a video section: www.holdnyt.dk/video htaccess rule: RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^video index.php?area=video [L,QSA] Problem is that these URLs give the same content:
www.holdnyt.dk/anystring/video
www.holdnyt.dk/whatsoever/video Any one with a take on whats wrong with the htaccess line? -Rasmus0 -
Blocked URL's by robots.txt
In Google Webmaster Tools shows me 10,936 Blocked URL's by robots.txt and it is very strange when you go to the "Index Status" section where shows that since April 2012 robots.txt blocked many URL's. You can see more precise on the image attached (chart WMT) I can not explain why I have blocked URL's ? because I have nothing in robots.txt.
Technical SEO | | meralucian37
My robots.txt is like this: User-agent: * I thought I was penalized by Penguin in April 2012 because constantly i'am losing visitors now reaching over 40%. It may be a different penalty? Any help is welcome because i'm already so saturated. Mera robotstxt.jpg0 -
Getting 404 error when open the cache link of my site
My site is hazanstadservice.se and when I am trying to open this to check the cache date i got a 404 error from google. I don't know why ? The cache page url is http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j99uW96RuToJ:www.hazanstadservice.se/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk.
Technical SEO | | Softlogique0 -
Index page 404 error
Crawl Results show there is 404 error page which is index.htmk **it is under my root, ** http://mydomain.com/index.htmk I have checked my index page on the server and my index page is index.HTML instead of index.HTMK. Please help me to fix it
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Wrong Title Tag & No Meta Description showing up in Google SERP's
I'd like to know what I can do to get the correct title tag + meta description that I have on the page for www.myescondidomovers.com/ to actually show up in the SERP's on Google? It's currently just showing my main keyword and the domain name, nothing else. See attached and thanks in advance for you help. Much appreciated. SERPS.png
Technical SEO | | afranklin0 -
Google shows the wrong domain for client's homepage
Whenever the homepage of my client's homepage appears in Google results, the search engine is not showing our URL as our domain, but instead a partner domain that is linking to us. (The correct title and meta description of our homepage is showing.) I believe this is caused by the partner website (with a much higher pank rank) linking to our homepage from their footer to a URL with it's own domain that 302 redirects to our homepage. Example: Link: http://www.partnerwebsite.com/?ad2203 302 redirects to: http://www.clientwebsite.com/?moreadtracking The simple fix would be for the client to ask for removal of the 302 hijacking link - but they are uncomfortable with this request since they had requested it prior, and their relationship is not the best. Is there any other way to fix this?
Technical SEO | | Conor_OShea_ETUS0